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“No need to be sorry, man. I get it. You’ve had a shock. Let me help if I can.” We’d all taken our knocks over the years. Coop was the first one to stand up and offer a hand, or a shoulder—fuck even just grabbed a beer and sat next to you.
“I just—I saw him last week. He was in group. He’s been doing great. He started coming in to the community center about five years ago. Chip on his shoulder. Shitty attitude. Issues at home. Issues at school. Issues with his sexuality. He just—he was lost, you know?”
Yeah, I did.
“He didn’t have a lot of friends, and his parents were always fighting. He didn’t know how to ask for the help he needed. So he would pick fights in group. Anger he got. Abuse he got. A helping hand? Fuck.” Coop shot to his feet, phone still in hand. For a moment, it looked like he was going to throw it but he just put it down and paced away.
There was still food on the table and the suite had a single cup coffee maker, so I headed for that while Coop moved. Agitation marked every step. Normally, I wouldn’t make coffee in the room. Frankie always said she didn’t mind. However, since my angel missed her real coffee, it didn’t kill me to wait.
When the first hiss of the coffee echoed through the quiet room, he pivoted to face me. “He was really pissed off one day and he threw a chair. It broke one of the blackboards. Didn’t break the chair.”
“Good chair.”
Coop stared at me for a moment, then let out a sharp half-laugh before he nodded. “Yeah, good chair. Anyway, I didn’t say a word, just picked up his chair, put it back where it was and stood there until he sat back down again. After group, I asked him to stay.”
Asked him to stay and got his problems out of him, I’d bet. That was what Coop did. He talked and got you to talk until you told him everything. I wanted to be that for him right now.
“Let me tell you, this kid didn’t want to stay and he sure as shit didn’t want to hear from me. I’m the rich white dude, with the big fancy car and the big fancy house and what could I know?” There were tears in his words. He rubbed a hand over his face carrying them away. “I told him—I didn’t know squat. That was why I needed him to tell me.”
“That sounds like you,” I said, fixing the coffee the way he liked it before sliding the cup over to him. Then I started another for me. “I mean, if he was gonna have an attitude…”
“Reminded me of Jake. Jake does anger real well.”
Yeah, he did. “But he’s much more laid back these days.” In high school? Jake never met a fight he wasn’t willing to have. Fuck anyone who looked sideways at Frankie or tried to hurt her.
“Yeah.” Coop gave me a half-smile. It had elements of sadness in it. “Sometimes I miss those stupid kids we were. Fucking around all summer, not realizing we were about to lose the best thing that ever happened to us.”
“I don’t.” It came out harsher than intended. “Being a teenager sucked. Losing Frankie cause we were stupid? That would have been a thousand times worse.”
“But we didn’t—that’s the part I kind of miss. It was easier sometimes. We knew who was bad and who our friends were.”
“Frankie’s mom tried to kill Archie and damn near killed Frankie when she screwed with his car. She lied to Eddie and told him that Frankie was his kid and it almost killed Archie thinking they were blood-related. Are you sure we knew all of that?”
Coop stared at me for a long moment. “I had you guys. We had Frankie. She had us. Y’all had me. I knew who was on my side. Even when we were disagreeing—I knew you’d be there if I needed you. Michael didn’t have that.”
Michael. We’d circled back to the kid. I nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that. You’re right, you guys were as much my lifeline as she was. Hell, still are.”
He saluted me with his coffee. “Michael didn’t have that. He was—alone and a loner. He didn’t want friends. He didn’t want ties or connections. He was counting down the years to graduation and then he wanted to leave and go—you know out in the world.”
Coop downed a third of his coffee with a grimace.
“This is shit.”
“Well, we’re in Seattle. There are like a billion coffee shops out there.”
He gave me a faint smile. “That means leaving Frankie.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you wanted to do that. So—keep talking, I know the story doesn’t end with him not wanting to be friends with anyone or cutting people off.”
“No, it was a lot of attitude. Mostly what I got out of that conversation was he wasn’t comfortable anywhere. Not even at the community center. Then he took off. Didn’t see him for two weeks. One of the things we try to do is just make it a safe space for the kids.”
He blew out a breath, another faint smile creased his mouth.
“Then he walks in, two weeks later, like it was the next day. He takes a seat in the group and he says nothing. He’s there every day for the next week. I shifted my schedule around cause I worried if I wasn’t there…”
“He might leave again.” It wasn’t a question.
“That was my thought. At the same time, we can’t cater to every single kid all the time. We need them to trust the process, but?—”
